


Sunset

by maplemarcher



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: Blood and Violence, Character Death, Established Relationship, Heavy Angst, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Undead, Vomiting, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemarcher/pseuds/maplemarcher
Summary: Axel's waiting for Lukas to come home from an errand. The sun has already begun to set, and he's nowhere to be found.





	Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> it's been too long since I made Axel suffer

     Axel watches the sun slowly sink behind the horizon, its orange light casting long shadows on the porch. The birdsong has long since grown quiet, the birds having settled down for the night, though he can see two stragglers silhouetted black against the sky as they flit from tree to tree. The cat stretches and paws at the door to be let in, his green eyes wide. Axel opens it a fraction, waiting for the white tip of his tail to disappear before letting it shut again. The evening is peaceful and the dying rays of the sun feel warm on his face, but Axel doesn’t feel as content as he should.

     Lukas isn’t home yet.

     He’d left a few hours ago, when the sun was making its descent, but still far above the hills in the distance. Axel didn’t mind waiting for him; he was just going to Beacontown and then to the forest near his house to get more wood from his furnace. He’s been gone far too long for such a simple errand.

     After a moment of consideration, Axel pulls on his sandals and heads to the small patch of forest. If Lukas isn’t there, it means he got held up in Beacontown and is probably staying the night there. Axel wouldn’t mind that at all. It’d be better than Lukas travelling in the middle of the night.

     The sun is completely gone by the time Axel reaches the trees. Monsters will be creeping out of the caves and shadows any minute now. His heart pounds the further he goes into the fir trees. The layer of pine needles on the ground muffles his footsteps. It will be harder for any monsters to detect him, but it’ll also be hard for him to hear any of them coming.

     The forest is oddly quiet. No animal is making a sound—not even crickets. Axel swallows and follows the path marked by posts embedded in the ground that leads to the grove of small trees Lukas uses for gathering wood. He keeps his hand on the hilt of the knife in his pocket the whole way there. Something doesn’t feel right.

     Axel finally reaches the grove, and what he sees there makes his blood run cold. Lukas is on the ground, neck torn open where it meets his shoulder, a zombie on the forest floor with Lukas’ axe embedded in its skull. Lukas is still breathing—Axel can hear his gasping, gurgling breaths.

     “Lukas!” he shouts as he rushes over to him, kneeling on the ground.

     “Axel?” Lukas chokes. “How’d you—” He coughs, blood spilling from his mouth and the wound in his neck. “How’d you find me?”

     “You took a while to come back, so I came looking for you,” Axel says. He’s trying to think of what to do, but nothing’s coming to mind. He can’t think when he’s kneeling in a steadily growing pool of Lukas’ blood. “We have to—we have to get you out of here.” He moves to scoop Lukas up in his arms, but feels a hand on his wrist.

     “Leave me,” Lukas says. He’s growing paler by the minute. He’s lost so much blood. “I’m not going to last much longer, and when I die—”

     “Shut up!” Axel growls. “You’re not going to die!”

     “Axel.”

     Axel glares down at Lukas, feeling tears well up in his eyes. He can’t die. He won’t let him. He  _ just  _ got back from Boomtown, dammit. He hasn’t seen Lukas in months. They were going to spend a week together. Axel was going to ask if he could stay there longer. They were going to live together in the cozy little house outside of Beacontown. Axel was going to get to wake up next to Lukas every morning. This wasn’t going to happen.

     “I love you,” Lukas whispers.

     “I-I—” Axel chokes as the tears spill over. His throat is tight. “I love you too. Please don’t—don’t leave me. Please. Lukas—”

     Lukas doesn’t respond. He’s still looking up at Axel, but there’s no light behind his eyes. The wound on his neck has stopped bleeding. Axel shakes him desperately, shouting his name, his voice breaking, but Lukas’ head just lolls forward onto his chest.

     “Lukas,” Axel whispers, giving his shoulders one last feeble shake, “Lukas, babe, please.”

     When he still says nothing, Axel breaks. He clutches Lukas’ limp form to his chest, burying his face in his soft blonde hair and sobbing. This doesn’t feel real. This can’t be real. It all happened so suddenly. It feels like a terrible dream. He wants to wake up. Axel pinches himself, screws his eyes shut, thinks about waking up, but none of it works. He’s still here, on the forest floor, his pants stained with Lukas’ blood and pine needles clinging to his legs.

     A low groan anchors Axel to reality. He can hear a zombie shuffling through the pine needles. It must have smelled the blood and made its way toward the source. Axel wrenches Lukas’ axe out of the fallen zombie’s skull, picks up Lukas, and runs. He refuses to look behind him until he’s back in the house, chest heaving and legs trembling. A few of the shambling corpses have followed him, but they don’t come near the house. They simply stand there, staring. Axel tears his gaze away and locks the door.

     He places Lukas on his bed gently and closes his eyes with one hand. If he were under the covers, it would almost look like he was asleep. That’s what the cat seems to think. He curls up against Lukas’ legs, purring. The sight makes Axel’s heart break all over again. He has to leave the room. The living room is the only room in the house without a clear view into the bedroom, so he collapses in one of the chairs in front of the furnace.

     Axel knows he needs to think about what to do next, but he doesn’t think he can. His boyfriend just died in his arms. That thought alone is enough to make him violently expel the contents of his stomach, coughing and gasping for air. The stench of the blood finally registers in his mind. The blood, the death, the reek of rotting flesh. He vomits again, on all fours and shaking.

     “Fuck,” Axel chokes. “Fuck! Dammit!” He picks up a flower pot and throws it against the wall, feeling a small twinge of satisfaction when it shatters and sends the soil scattering across the floor.

     As the pot shatters, Axel hears the cat yowl. He watches him run out of the bedroom, tail fluffed and hackles raised, still growling as he stares in the room. That’s unusual enough for Axel to pick himself up and see what he’s hissing at. 

     It’s Lukas.

     He’s sitting up, eyes open, movements stiff and jerky. Axel’s heart rate spikes as his head slowly turns in his direction. Lukas’ eyes are dark—unnaturally so. He tries to get off the bed, but it seems he’s forgotten how. He reaches for Axel, leaning forward until he falls to the floor in a heap, groaning. His skin is tinged green. There’s a smell emanating from him that makes Axel’s empty stomach turn and cramp. This is worse than him being dead. This is the worst thing Axel could imagine.

     The cat hisses and growls as Lukas slowly makes his way to his feet. Axel can’t move. He can only stare as the hollow shell of the man he loves shuffles toward him, arms hanging at his sides limply and gurgling moans rip from his throat.

     “Lukas,” he whispers.

     If Axel didn’t know better, he would have thought the creature in front of him let out a strangled gurgle that sounded like his name.

     Lukas’ axe is by the door. Axel finally moves toward it, his feet as heavy as lead, and picks it up in shaking hands. The cat is scrabbling at the door. Lukas trips over his own feet and crashes to the floor again. Axel raises the axe, standing over the zombie as he—no,  _ it— _ picks itself up slowly. It raises its head to look up at him, its nose broken and blood dripping down its face.

     Axel knows it isn’t him. He knows. Even so, he hesitates. His arms tremble. He can’t. He  _ can’t. _

     “Ax...el…”

     “Lukas?”

     The zombie doesn’t attempt to stand. It reaches forward and wraps its hand around Axel’s ankle, digging its nails into his flesh. Axel only watches with wide eyes as it drags itself forward, baring its teeth. This finally makes Axel come to his senses. He kicks at the zombie’s hand frantically, but misses and gets its face instead. The feeling of its already broken nose crack against his foot makes his stomach turn. Before it can reach for him again, Axel brings down the axe on its skull. It shudders, eyes rolling back into its head, and goes limp.

     Axel’s chest is heaving. The cat is cowering behind him, shaking and mewling. He stares at the corpse on the ground before picking the cat up and sitting on the couch with him in his lap, staring at the puddle of vomit beginning to mix with blood on the floor.

     He doesn’t move again until morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I have something big in the works, so it might be a little while before I post another fic! Stay tuned!! ;3c


End file.
